crash
by dedletrbox
Summary: no one would ever guess you didn't have a license OC narrator & Charlie [Complete]
1. Chapter 1

A/N: All standard disclaimers apply: I don't own and don't profit. Only the writing is mine. Please let me know what you think...

They say you always remember your first. I remember that when I first got the call, I thought Mario was fucking with me. He liked to assign me these stupid, milkrun details because I was new on the force and 'cause I wouldn't go out with him. No one with a functioning frontal lobe would go out with Mario. Sometimes I played along, because I was new and because everyone gets a kick out of his Napoleon complex. But sending me out to the Meadowlands at midnight to ID an abandoned car was going too far, even if he'd asked nicely. Which he hadn't. With his usual tact, Mario suggested that I might want to do some real policework after spending the day playing Metro Traffic Liason with the Newark International Airport rent-a-cops.

"I'll come right down to Central and _liase_ you a new one, buddy. My shift is done in half an hour. I'm going home. Gotta pick up Jason from my Mom's. I am _done_."

That met with a hail of mic clicks—radio applause from other patrols on the same frequency. Everyone hates the dispatcher.

"Caro, babe, there's a three-car pileup on the bridge and a car fire blocking two lanes on the turnpike; you'll be sitting at the ramp for an hour anyway," Mario wheedled, "Go check out the car and we can have it towed before the tree-huggers even know it's there. Save yourself a day of paperwork." God, I hated it when he was right. This was ten years ago, remember: there were a dozen environmental groups interested in rehabilitating the Meadowlands marshes that separate Newark Airport from the city. Every time anyone sneezed within the Meadowlands watershed, picketers gathered at the State House. Not that they didn't have a point: the area had been a dumping ground for too long—for the Mob as well as for United Chemical. But why the Transit Police always ended up with the paperwork, I could never figure out. In particular, I was puzzled by how the files always seemed to end up on _my_ desk.

"OK, Mario," I conceded. He was right about the traffic: already, I could see the taillights backing up along the airport turn off. "But, swear to God, if there's a dead mobster in that car, he's going in _your_ locker."

Another patrol car cut in to speculate on just why Mario's locker always smelled so foul, anyway. The suggestions flew back and forth as I maneuvered from the airport exit to the utility road that cut out into the marshes. Taxpayers' money at work, I figured, but I didn't turn the radio off. I'm not exactly timid, as even Mario will admit, but the Meadowlands are eerie even at the best of times. The way the highway cuts overhead, especially in the evening, with the city lights off on one side—makes you feel like you're sinking, like you've just been put in a life raft and shoved out onto some big ocean of darkness. What can I say? I'm a city kid: long empty stretches of slushy ground make me think of quicksand and copperheads and that urban legend about the alligators in the sewers. Not to mention the fact that the whole area had once been prime real estate for hit men. Why bother with cement shoes when you could just beat someone's face to a pulp, burn off his fingerprints and chuck him in a bog? Let Mother Nature do the heavy lifting. Oh, yeah, the environmentalists were going to solve a lot of our missing persons cases when they started dredging for the Meadowlands Visitors Center.

Even the surveyor who'd called in the abandoned car hadn't wanted to spend any extra time here after sundown. He'd already been on the highway, headed for New York, when he'd called to report a car abandoned in a ditch. Hadn't even got a good look at it, just enough to say he thought they were out-of-state tags, which couldn't be good news: all the environmental groups were local. And for a surveyor, I gotta say, his directions sucked. Of course, there were only a few unflooded roads, but still I probably passed the car at least once before my high beams reflected off the shower of broken glass that marked where it had gone off into the marsh.

The locker conversation had meandered onto something else by the time I found the flashlight in my glove compartment and clambered down the embankment. It was really hot outside of the air-conditioned patrol car, the kind of damp, sticky heat that comes from standing water and untended vegetation. And I was amazed at how _loud_ it was once I got out of the car: every cricket, mosquito and water bird in the tri-state area had taken up residence here and each one was shouting for attention. Over it all was the distant grumble of traffic. As I picked my way across the dry sections of land, my light attracted some kind of creepy winged spider that I knew would reappear in my nightmares. The car—a cheap compact—hung at a crazy angle in the muck. Looked like the driver had spun right off the road, but I couldn't tell why: most of the smaller paths were submerged, but the main drag was wide as a boulevard and built like levee. There hadn't been any skid marks, either: I would have seen them on my first pass. The driver seemed to have quite placidly driven the car clear off the edge of the road. It probably would have rolled completely if the rear axel hadn't caught up on the remnants of an old windbreak. Amazing that anyone had walked away alive. Yup, this was a job for the tow-truck, and probably the junkyard after that: the whole front end was accordion-pleated, a back door had popped open on impact, the windshield was a web of cracked glass.

There was a sticker on the rear window—advertising a minor league team I'd have to ask Jason about—and a parking permit from UCLA. UCLA? I leaned in to make sure I'd read it right, then ran the flashlight beam across the rear bumper: sure enough, there were those out-of-state plates. California, of all places! I think I said that out loud, actually, followed by a few choice adjectives modifying 'California driver.' But I don't remember the exact phrasing because almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, they were cut off by a gurgled moan from somewhere very close by.

Now, I am not an outdoors girl, but I knew that wasn't a bird. Birds are too fragile; they couldn't sustain the kind of pain I heard in that sound. I hadn't been serious about the dead mobster, but was it possible that the driver _hadn't_ walked away, after all? I cast my flashlight around the crash site, then back to the car itself, playing over the busted windshield. Even though I half expected them, when the eyes reflected back at me, I nearly choked on my own scream. Holy Christ! There someone still in that wreck, some guy, and his eyes, at least, were very much alive: he was watching me, through a mask of blood, as intently as if he were trying to count every sin on my soul.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Edited to fix the chapter-breaks. One careful reader pointed out that chapters 2 and 3 overlapped (that's what I get for trying to upload multiple chapters for multiple stories at the same time!).

There are protocols for arriving at the site of a severe injury, and I knew them once. But I did well enough at the Academy that I had my choice of postings. There's a very good reason that I chose Transit over Homicide, or even Robbery: I am not good with people in physical pain. In Transit, I figured, by the time I arrive on the scene, most of the people involved are either exchanging insurance information, or they are long out of their misery. And that's true, for the most part. But somewhere I miscalculated. I don't mind blood, I'm not afraid of dying, but the kind of sheer, better-off-dead agony caused by a few tons of metal traveling at 60 miles per hour…sometimes I think I should work Booking & Intake instead.

The protocols exist mostly to keep us from going to pieces at moments like this, and they came back by rote: I remembered to announce that I was an officer with the New Jersey Transit Police. The force calls this _establishing authority_ and I have always found it a little ridiculous: step aside, grim reaper, the cavalry is here! "My badge number is 001729," I said, crossing every 't', in case the crickets or the New York lights wanted to challenge my jurisdiction. "Was anyone else in the car with you? No, no, don't move! Stay as still as you can." I crouched down next to the car and the dark eyes rolled toward me. It seemed to take a great amount of effort for the driver to summon enough breath to answer me. "001729," he repeated, sounding so strangled that I knew something was broken: his nose, some ribs. His voice was nearly lost in the frantic hum of wildlife, and what I did hear I could hardly believe. "If you remove the zeros," he wheezed, "that's the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."

I was down on my knees in the marsh, as close as possible to the kid—and he really was just a kid, didn't even look old enough to drive—so when he said no, he was alone, I was in a good position to thank every deity I could think of. Two people would have been more than I could take.

I had to get moving; had to radio for an ambulance; had to remember all the first aid I'd ever learned which suddenly seemed totally inadequate. I did manage to clamber to my feet, missed whatever it was the kid was saying.

"Sorry—what?"

"Thought you were ahhh…angel. 'cause of the light, halo…effect"

I looked stupidly at the flashlight in my hand; yeah, I guess I could see how otherwordly it would look shining through the busted up windshield. "Oh, no, no I'm…very far from an angel."

He smiled a little at that—and God, if it wasn't just a heartbreaking smile. "Just as well. I, uhm, don't believe…" He drifted out a little then, kind of lost the train of thought, which reminded that this was not social hour.

"Hey, do you have a license? A driver's license?" I repeated when he looked blankly at me. "NO! No, don't move, don't even nod, just tell me where it is."

"Was…cupholder."

I had a boyfriend who used to do that, Jason's father. He would pick me up after my classes and we'd drive out to Jones Beach and he'd shove his wallet—which was always crammed full of stuff—into the driver's side cupholder. Made it easy to find when we got to toll plazas. Sure enough, when I snaked my hand around the broken glass and reached down, I could feel the leather. Yes! My first bit of luck all evening: a wallet would have a license, an insurance card, local address, all information that would make things easier.

"I have to go call this in. Get an ambulance. I'll be back in a minute; 'til then, I need you to stay absolutely still." I had to keep reemphasizing that because first responders are trained to assume there's spinal injury unless an EMT actually tells us otherwise. "Can you do that for me?"

"Yes," he said, remembering not to nod his head. "Would you…can you leave the light?"

"Sure," I said, before I gave myself time to think about how I'd get back to the patrol car in the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

Actually, since the patrol car was on the road, backlit against the summer sky, I made it back pretty quickly, but not before I ran into a few puddles. I turned on the dome light, clicked on the radio and dumped everything out of the wallet. State of California license, an insurance card, there was an ID card—Princeton—so once I got Mario on the radio, things moved quickly.

Mario said he'd radioed for an ambulance, but he had no idea how long it would take with the traffic.

"This is important, Mario!"

"I know, babe, really. And they'll turn on all the lights and sirens, but I just can't tell you more. So make sure this kid isn't gonna bleed out, and then brace his head and keep him talking. I'm running the car info through now, so hold on a sec."

I was squinting at the contents of the wallet. Both the driver's license and the ID card were made out to one Charles Edward Eppes, and the pictures matched. But it was a _faculty_ ID and according to the license, Charles Edward was all of 20 years old. I could spot a fake New Jersey or New York ID from ten paces, but I didn't know what a California license was supposed to look like. And who would get one that said you were _twenty_? There were other cards: public library, Triple A, credit card, a photocopy card for the Princeton Library Consortium, something marked "Institute for Advanced Study Lab Admittance." All made out for the same guy. There was $31 in paper money and another $1.47 in change. (Yes, I counted it. I was nervous, OK? I was probably only waiting on Mario for maybe two minutes, but it felt like longer.) There was a stub from the New York Subway, a piece of gum, a safety pin, a couple of receipts, business cards from a publishing company, lots of slips of paper. Also a baseball card: Don Eppes of the Rangers. That was the only piece of paper that didn't have numbers scribbled all over it, back and front. So many numbers that I actually had trouble picking out the one where I'd written the license plate info. (Jesus, was Mario ever going to get back to me? I couldn't just sit here all night waiting for him to run the damn plates.).

No one would go through the trouble to manufacture a whole fake wallet, to put in all the crap that people pick up and stuff in their pockets in the course of a week. The guy in the car, even though he looked sixteen, was apparently a twenty year old associate professor. I wasn't surprised when Mario clicked back to tell me that the car really was registered to a Dr. Eppes, who apparently lived in California but was in Princeton for the year on some kind of academic exchange whatever. "Got good news for you though, babe."

"Mario, if you call me 'babe' again, you're gonna end up looking worse than the kid in that car. Where's my ambulance?"

He skated right past my question. "Good news is, this car has been in a couple of accidents before: two in California, one in Princeton and another one outside Chicago."

"It's an old car, Mario. Why is this supposed to make me feel better?"

"Cause all the accidents were within the past two years: Dr. Eppes runs into stuff all the time and he's always come out just fine."

"Everybody's luck runs out sometime," I said and really hated how squeaky my voice got.

"Hey, it's just—look, a lot of the damage, the structural damage to the car? That's not new, is all I meant. It didn't all happen tonight. It's not as bad as it looks, babe." He was very nice about it, really, and it did make me feel a little better, so I didn't tell him not to call me babe. I told him to do something about that ambulance while I kept Charles conscious.

Back out into the humid night. The insect racket surprised me all over again. Leaving the flashlight had actually been a good idea: the wreck wasn't exactly illuminated, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about the ambulance missing it.

I was probably gone for less than five minutes, but I can't tell you how relieved I was when I got to the car and the kid—Charles—smiled at me. Ok, he was alive and awake. All I had to do was keep him that way until the ambulance arrive.


	4. Chapter 4

Back to the car, landing in a few more puddles on the way, but somehow that didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. I explained to Charles that the ambulance was on its way and asked what was hurt and what had happened. It didn't really matter: it was a single-car accident, no one was pressing charges and, other than keeping him from moving, there wasn't actually any medical stuff I was authorized to do. But I didn't want him going into shock or nodding off and never waking up again. As long as he was talking, he wasn't doing either of those things.

"My arm. My head," he said distinctly. He seemed to have woken up a bit. "I hit, uhm, the window. And the dashboard. And the steering wheel. I got lost…Meant to go to the air…plane? Airport. To the airport."

"Ok, I'm going to sit in back here and just…make sure you don't move. So that you don't, uh, exacerbate anything." I didn't want to come right out and say that if he moved, he could be paralyzed for life. Hearing that would sure as hell make _me _move, and fast. Charles didn't seem particularly concerned when I wrenched open the dented door and clambered into the backseat. I had to go in through the other side of the car because the driver's side was so banged up. Once I was behind the driver's seat, I could slide my hands between the seat and the headrest and kind of reach around to stabilize his head. Nowadays, of course, I'd be doing this in a full biohazard suit 'cause of the blood, but back then all they issued were dinky latex gloves—which, of course, I had left in the patrol car.

Bracing his head with one hand, I used the other to fumble through the first-aid kit that I had, miraculously, remembered to bring. Of course, it didn't really include anything that would help in the event of a car crash, no pocket-sized Jaws of Life or anything. But I could at least rip open some of the antiseptic wipes and lean around to wipe up some of the blood. There was nothing I could do about the arm, once I'm made sure it wasn't a compound fracture, and I couldn't tell for sure if the ribs were broken or just bruised.. Calmed us both down, though, my trying as gently as possibly to sop up what I could. Yes, the nose was probably broken, there was a nasty gash on the left side of his forehead, but head wounds bleed a lot and once the blood was gone, things didn't look so bad. In fact, if he grew out his hair, no one would ever notice the forehead thing, anyway. Somehow most of the rear-view mirror was intact, only missing a little sliver, so I could actually see the top half of his face. He had huge eyes, dark like my son's, and long lashes. My sisters are always saying it's such a shame that Jason's lashes are wasted on a boy, but Charles could have given him a run for his money.

Somehow the fact that Charles looked like he could be Jason's older cousin made the fact that I was sitting in the Meadowlands at night with my palms on his jaw and my thumbs supporting the mastoid processes behind his ears seem just a little less weird.

"So, why were you going to the airport?" I asked. Not the best conversational gambit, but good enough. I started to make a crack about how he had _so totally _missed his flight, but then decided that would not be in the best of taste. Give me a little credit here, ok?

"Going home."

"Home is…California?"

"Yeah, outside LA. With my parents. And my brother, sometimes."

"Well, you're a long way from home." Of course, I already knew, thanks to Mario's records, what Charles was doing in New Jersey. I knew because he'd registered this car as a long-term temporary and the form explained his employment. Most people don't do that, they just wait for us to pull them over for out-of-state tags and then get really pissy. Charles played by the rules, even the obscure ones. Good for him. So what went wrong? Why were we doing waiting on an ambulance in the middle of the night, well off the beaten track?

"I went to school here and my school—my old school—invited me to come back for a semester and teach."

"Hmm, and what do you teach?"

"Math. Applied mathematics."

"Oh." This cut off a lot of my conversational openings because "I was always really bad at math."

He smiled then; I couldn't see it, but I could feel it under my fingers. "I'm sure you're not," he said politely, "not really bad."

I laughed, "Charles, I assure you, and every math teacher I've ever had will tell you, I really, _really_ am."

"Can you calculate the tip when you go out to eat?"

"Well, yeah, that I can do."

"Can you understand the weather report when they give the percentage of rain for the five-day forecast? Or the sports stats in the morning paper?"

"Yes, but that's not really—"

"How about balancing your checkbook? Paying the bills? Figuring out how long until the check actually clears and how much interest is being paid on it in the meantime?"

"Uh, those, too."

"If I told you that I'm giving a talk on Wang's Paradox in two weeks, four days and thirteen hours, can you tell me what time I'll be giving my opening remarks?"

That one took a minute—"August thirteenth, at…1:00 in the afternoon?"

"What day of the week?"

"Friday."

"And since California is six hours behind the East Coast, that means it will be what time here?"

"7:00 in the morning."

"There you go," he said quietly, "You're perfectly good at math. Maybe not, you know, brilliant, but you don't need to be. And certainly not really, really bad. Seems that every math teacher you've ever had was wrong."

"Wow," was all I could say. I had a feeling that applied mathematics, as it was taught at Princeton, was probably was a little more complicated than that, but Charles had managed to get around the whole subject without making me feel patronized. That took talent. "You must be one hell of a professor!"

"Well," he said modestly, "I try really hard." He took a breath, "That sounds dumb, doesn't it? I mean, I've always been, uhm,…I'm pretty good at math, myself, but I try to imagine what it's like to not have that…knack for numbers."

"I guess you guys are out for the summer then, up at Princeton?"

I felt a twitch beneath my fingers again, not a smile this time. More like a flinch. I moved from where I'd been resting my forehead against the back of the driver's seat, hoping to catch Charles's eyes in the mirror, but he was looking out into the darkness.

"I was teaching a summer class. But I have to go home."

"Oh. I hope it's…nothing serious?"

"I don't know."

He was kind of shutting down. Still answering, but shorter sentences, fewer words, longer pauses. Jason used to do that when he was younger, when he got tired, just clam up: go monosyllabic and then completely mute. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder just how long Charles had been out here. I imagined him driving around, lost in the Meadowlands, worried about whatever was going on in California. The frustration of being able to see the airport towers but always running into dead ends and flooded roads. I kind of wished I could just tell him to relax, nod off, that I'd wake him when the ambulance arrived. But of course, I couldn't do that. I had to keep him talking.


	5. Chapter 5

"Not trouble with your parents, I hope?"

"No." Long, long pause. "My brother."

"Younger?" I asked sympathetically, thinking about the number of times I'd had to bail my baby sister Patricia out of trouble when we were younger.

"Older, actually, six years."

"Is he also a teacher?" I asked. He could be an Indian chief for all that I cared, but when Charles stopped talking, I kind of stopped breathing, so anything to get an answer.

"Nah, he's a, uhh—I don't know what he is now. He used to play ball. Baseball. And then he just…quit."

"Whoa, like _professional_ ball?" I thought of the baseball card in the wallet.

The smile again, fainter this time, but still there. "Yeah. He's pretty good."

"So you're going home to talk him out of quitting?"

Long silence. I looked in the mirror: Charles had wrinkled his forehead. It was taking him too long to work his way around my syntax. I hadn't been thinking about the ambulance, but shouldn't it be here by now? "Charles, are you ok?"

"Yeah, I…yeah, it's just…I don't understand." He sounded about ten years old when he said it, ten years old and totally lost.

"Don't understand what?" I asked, trying to decide if it would be all right to leave him for a second and radio from the car.

"There aren't a whole lot of people who are as good at _anything_ as Don is at baseball," Charles said. Don, I remembered, was the name on the card. That must be the brother. "So isn't it kind of, I don't know, _wrong_ not to keep playing? I mean, how many people wouldn't give a lot to trade places with him?"

"Well, what does he want to do?" Career counseling. Just another service provided by your friendly NJ-Newark Transport Officers.

"He's going to join the FBI."

I nearly laughed out loud. Jesus, a math professor and an FBI agent. In one family. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at _their _Thanksgiving dinner! I didn't laugh, though, because I could tell that Charles really was upset.

"What made him choose the FBI?"

"He says it's important."

"Ok." I tried to elaborate: "I guess I can see that some people might not find baseball games a really, uh, fulfilling life. After all, it's…only a game?"

"But he's so _good _at it."

Wow, Charles, you're really stuck on that point, I thought, but what I said was, "You don't have to be good at just one thing, you know. You're probably good at lots of stuff beside math, right?"

No answer.

"Right, Charles?" I looked in the mirror and was surprised to find him staring right back at me with those serious eyes.

"No," he said, simply, "math is about all I'm good for."

I didn't know what to say to that. I mean, I was trying to keep this boy's brains—his considerable brains—from leaking out his ears. It didn't seem right to just laugh it off and say I was sure he was good at lots of things. If he could admit that he wasn't good at stuff, the least I could do was take him at his word.

"You could be, though," I said finally, "I mean, you might not be _as _good at everything as you are at math…" I remembered that little trick he'd done with my badge number; didn't know what it meant, but it had sounded impressive. "In fact, I guess it would be pretty incredible for you to be as good at everything as you are at math…but you don't have to be brilliant at everything." I kind of fed his own words back to him. "It's not really an end-sum deal. Being good at other things won't suddenly make you bad at math. Ok?"

I caught his eyes again in the mirror, just for a second before he looked off again. He looked about ready to cry, but he did mumble "yeah."

"Who knows," I said, trying to cheer him up, "you might decide someday to give up on math and go into law enforcement yourself."

Charles looked genuinely shocked, "I could _never_ give up on math."

"Right. Sure," I agreed quickly, not wanting to upset him, "maybe you could do both? Your brother could get you a job."

I got a real smile, then; too gentle to be a thousand-watts, but pretty illuminating nevertheless. And it's not like I was lying; they've got to need mathematicians in those federal agencies, right?

"They might not take you once they see your driving record, though," I added, only half teasing. "What—five crashes in two years?"


	6. Chapter 6

I expected him to say they weren't all his fault, to launch into the typical song-and-dance about faulty break lines and bad roads and cops who just didn't like they way he looked. But he just sighed.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, so how'd it happen?" I felt like I was trying to pry information out of Jason. Information that he didn't want to give me.

"I get distracted."

"I'll say. The road you're supposed to be on is away over there." I moved one hand off his head long enough to flap in the direction of the patrol car. "You won't be doing your brother much good if you never make it to California."

Aww, I shouldn't have said that. Now he looked like he was getting teary again. This brother must really be something to warrant this kind of adoration.

"Is it because you're thinking about work, you know, math?" I asked more gently, remembering how I'd more than once nearly burned the house down because I was thinking about work stuff while trying to cook dinner.

"No."

"No?"

He sounded really tired. If he'd sounded ten years old just a while ago, now he sounded about seventy. "I think about numbers, about math, constantly. Literally all the time. Every waking moment. And then, at night, I dream about numbers. There's not much I _can't _do while thinking about math."

"If it's not math, then, what is it?"

"People." He sighed again, "What else is there?"

"People?"

"Yeah. I think about people. My family, my students, people from work. Just, you know, people. And what they're thinking, and why they do the stuff they do. It's really…it's confusing. I get confused. And then I lose focus."

That was not the answer I was expecting. At all. But, then, if I had to solve math problems while I drove, I'd probably run off the road, too. So it seemed reasonable that Charles could understand math easily and people not at all.

"Any way you could, maybe, _not_ think about people while you drive?"

"Can't help it."

"Can't help thinking about people?"

"Just think about…," he closed his eyes and there was a really long pause before he finished, "…what I think about."

"Well, if you can't help getting distracted, then maybe you just shouldn't drive?" I expected that to get a big response. What kid wants to give up his car?

"Yeah."

Gotta give me more than that, Charles. "I mean, is it really hard to get around in Los Angeles without a car?" Actually, I have since found out that it is, but when all this happened, my big city experiences were pretty much limited to the Big Apple, where only certified lunatics actually drive.

"Yeah."

"It is? I bet it's not that hard. Not for someone as smart as you are. I bet you could do it. You'd have to admit, it would be different."

"I'm different enough," he said, sounding really exhausted for the first time.

"You could bike, maybe."

"Mmmm…"

"And there are busses and stuff."

No response.

"Or walk." I waited.

"Or roller-skate." Nothing. "Charles? Hey, Charles? You need to answer me. This isn't funny," I said, even though Charles hadn't seemed to be the kind of person who would play games like that. My voice started getting all squeaky again, but I did my best to sound authoritative. He was just a kid, after all. "The ambulance is on its way, I promise, but I need you to keep talking to me."

The mirror reflection didn't look good—he looked kind of green and very, very still. Just the funny cast from the flashlight, I told myself. I tried to crane my head around between the seats without actually moving my hands. Even though, believe me, I wanted to move my hands. I wanted to shake this boy. Hard. And tell him to wake the hell up because _he was scaring me_.

"Charles. It is very important that you answer me. Right now. I need to know you're all right. You need to be all right."

I tried to take his pulse, check his breathing, but all I could feel was the blood pounding through my own veins, tingling into the fingers that were bracing this boy's head. Something bounced in the corner of my eye and, tense as I was, I nearly screamed. Lights, flashing lights, next to my patrol car. The ambulance, so long delayed, had arrived at last.

"Charles, the ambulance is here. So I need you to wake up now." I was not sounding authoritative at this point. I was not sounding like a sworn officer of the law. I was pretty much begging. "You need to wake up and be OK because you need to go home. You need to see you parents. And your brother, tell your brother how crazy you are about him and how proud you are…You need to go teach people about math. You need to go learn stuff yourself, lots of things, everything, anything you like. Because you can like more than one thing…"


	7. Chapter 7

I may have said more than that. At some point in my little monologue, the EMTs reached us and then there were hands to replace my hands, to keep Charles's neck straight while they extracted him from the car. They didn't need me any more. Suddenly, my empty hands felt really cold. One of the EMTs started drilling me—nature of the accident? how long since I put in the call? what first aid had I administered?

"And he was conscious?" the EMT looked at his clipboard

"Yeah, up until, I don't know, maybe five minutes ago? He just stopped talking all of a sudden."

"But coherent before that?"

"Yes. Yes, very coherent. Will he be ok?"

"Well, barring severe infection, he'll live. Broken bones, probably stitches on his head, busted his arm pretty good. I don't know about brain function. You said he just stopped responding? Do you think he could hear you?"

"I don't know. I don't know…I was talking, but I just didn't get anything back. Is that bad?"

The look on the technician's face told me it sure as hell wasn't good. He suddenly seemed to realize that I wasn't looking so good myself.

"Is this your first one?" he asked, not unsympathetically.

It wasn't my first accident, it wasn't my first accident with injuries, it wasn't even my first accident with fatalities. "Yes," I said. There was something about this one that was new to me.

He was about to recite some platitude when a blonde EMT rushed by, appearing out of nowhere. "He's up," she said, and evaporated again.

The first technician smiled at me; "See, there you go. Your guy's back on-line. We're gonna take him in, so if you need any information for your accident report, now's the time. Remember, though, brain function could be a mess, especially if he was out for as longer than we think."

Charles was in the back of the ambulance, strapped to a backboard and on a gurney with two EMTs fussing over him, one taping an IV and the other scanning the information Mario had sent them. Information that I had sent Mario roughly a million years ago.

"Any medical allergies, Charles?" It was the woman I'd just seen, the blonde. She must have telemorphed over here. "Do you like Charles or Charlie? Or Chuck? Or…" she asked idly, her eyes already skimming through the rest of the printout.

"Allergic to iodine, but that's it. And, uh, Charlie is fine," said Charles.

"OK, Iodine it _isn't._" The technician made a check mark on her sheet, then grabbed a clipboard and gave me a quick smile. "He's all yours, for about the next ninety seconds." She vanished again. The other EMT, the one with the drip, had already disappeared somewhere. Damn. People come and go so quickly here.

So there was a minute where it was just the two of us again, in the middle of the Meadowlands in the dark, before the ambulance got underway. Time for some bonding. Time for some immortal wisdom. Time for some deathless prose.

Nothing came to mind.

"You should have told me that you liked being called Charlie," I said stupidly.

He looked confused for just a second and then he smiled that impossibly sweet smile, young and old and innocent and knowing all at the same time. "It doesn't matter. My best friend calls me Charles all the time. You can like more than one thing, you know."

"You heard that!" Now, I'm no doctor, but if he'd heard what I was saying, he couldn't have been too far gone, right? Maybe there hadn't been any major damage to that amazing brain. Maybe he would be all right, after all.

"I heard it all."

I thought about getting into the ambulance with him, but there honestly wasn't that much more for me to do. I would only be in the way. Anyway, I had a kid of my own to get home to. And a few things I wanted to say to that kid of mine.


	8. Chapter 8

The accident report for that night got processed the next afternoon. It was filed away somewhere and then, when the files were converted to computer a few years later, it probably got thrown out. But I have a photocopy. Mario made it for me.

"Is there something wrong with it?" I asked when I got the report back in my mail.

"No, it's fine." Mario growled.

"So why do I have it back?"

"That's not the original. 'Sa copy."

"Copy, original, who cares? Why do I want it?"

"I just thought you might, is all."

I stared at him until he looked up from his console.

"Some people like to, you know, keep them. Especially when they turn out good."

"Keep _accident reports_?" That was maybe the most morbid thing I'd ever heard.

"Hey, just the first ones, OK?" Mario protested. "You don't ever forget your first one. Where you're the primary, you know, the only one on the scene. And everything works out good. That's a nice thing to have, sometimes."

Mario looked away from me, decided he was explaining too much. "You don't want it, give it back. Here, give it'a me. I got a trash can right here…"

I stood there for a minute with the accident report and a fistful of administrative memos from the interoffice mail. Thinking about this strange tenet of blue religion. Thinking that police work has got to be the most sentimental of all the hard-ass, don't-care professions out there. Imagine keeping mementoes even of 'the one you never forget.' Doubling up on the good memories to balance out all the bad ones that you couldn't get out of your head, no matter how hard you tried.

"No," I said finally, "That's ok. I'll keep it. Whatever."

I stuffed the accident report in a folder and put the folder in my locker. And by the time I left the Newark Transport Police, that folder was pretty thick. I didn't look at it much, but it was there. The collection of all the ones that worked out OK, beginning with my first. On the day I went to clear out my locker, I pulled out Charles's report—I never could think of him as Charlie.

Mario wasn't working the dispatch desk that day. If it had been someone I knew up there, I probably would have let it slide. But it was a new kid, practically an infant, just over from New York; I'd heard he was a whiz on computers, he hadn't heard anything about me. I told him I wanted to run a check on somebody's license, see if this guy had gotten into any trouble lately. Officially, this is not done, of course. Your records are your records and the police have to show 'reasonable need' before we can access them. Show reasonable need or know a computer shark from the Bronx.

The computer guy checked four different databases; "Nothing," he said, finally.

"Nothing?"

"No license with that number."

Aww, Christ. Charles had gone and driven himself off the road one too many times. Too busy thinking about people, and why we were more complicated than the most complicated math problem. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. You never forget your first one.

"What's the last accident listed for that license?" When had all that thinking caught up to him?

Bronx gave me a date; it matched the one on my accident report.

"Wait—there weren't any accidents after this one?" I asked.

He looked at me like maybe I was dumb as well as old. "Six accidents, total, listed under that number: two in California, one in Illinois, three here in Jersey. The last one on the date I just gave you."

"Then what happened?"

"Nothing." Bronx said again, slowly.

"Why did the number disappear?"

"It expired." He swiveled the computer monitor towards me, pointed out the dates. "The license expired, and the driver never renewed it."

In the NTSB database, you can see whether a licensee is deceased. A little red 'x' appears in their license history. It helps prevent ID fraud: you can't use your dead twin's license as your own photo ID, 'cause a scan on the license will show that he's dead. You'd be amazed at how many people try stuff like that.

There was no red x in the summary for Charles's license.

How badly would it freak Bronx out if I started crying right now? Or laughing? Or both at once? "So, since this accident ten years ago, the guy is alive and well and living in California?" I asked, as calmly as I could.

"Could be," Bronx shrugged, "but wherever he is, he sure ain't driving any more."

Endquote: "Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, evesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." (Walker Evans)

In the interests of full disclosure, I should make it clear that I know nothing about the Newark Transport Police, New Jersey or New York police procedures, the exact geography of the Meadowlands, car accident-processing, or the National Transportation Safety Board. That's only a brief list of the stuff I don't know anything about. Everything except the Numb3rs characters was made up from whole cloth. But I'd still really love to know what you think. And for those concerned about 'Hearing Voices,"--today I settle all family business.


End file.
